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196 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH WE VISIT "ADMIRAL BYNG"
FROM long residence in Bohemia, and fatal love of bachelor
ease and habits, Master Philip's pure tastes were so destroyed,
and his manners so perverted, that, you will hardly believe
it, he was actually indifferent to the pleasures of the refined home
we have just been describing ; and, when Agnes was away, sometimes
even when she was at home, was quite relieved to get out of
Beaunash Street. He is hardly twenty yards from the door, when
out of his pocket there comes a case ; out of the case there jumps
an aromatic cigar, which is scattering fragrance around as he is
marching briskly northwards to his next house of call. The pace
is even more lively now than when he is hastening on what you
call the wings of love to Beaunash Street. At the house whither
he is now going, he and the cigar are always welcome. There is
no need of munching orange chips, or chewing scented pills, or
flinging your weed away half-a-mile before you reach Thornhaugh
Street—the low vulgar place. I promise you Phil may smoke at
Brandon's, and find others doing the same. He may set the house
on fire, if so minded, such a favourite is he there ; and the Little
Sister, with her kind beaming smile, will be there to bid him
welcome. How that woman loved Phil, and how he loved her, is
quite a curiosity ; and both of them used to be twitted with this
attachment by their mutual friends, and blush as they acknowledged
it. Ever since the little nurse had saved his life as a schoolboy,
it was à la vie a la mort between them. Phil's father's
chariot used to come to Thornhaugh Street sometimes—at rare
times—and the Doctor descend thence and have colloquies with the
Little Sister. She attended a patient or two of his. She was
certainly very much better off in her money matters in these late
years, since she had known Dr. Firmin. Do you think she took
money from him ? As a novelist, who knows everything about his
people, I am constrained to say, Yes. She took enough to pay
some little bills of her weak-minded old father, and send the bailiffs
hand from his old collar. But no more. " I think you owe him
as much as that," she said to the Doctor, But as for compliments